At Least Marie Antoinette Would Let Us Have Cake

By: Frederick Meekins

During his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama lamented the tendency of Americans to eat what we want, drive SUV’s, and keep our homes climate controlled at 70 degrees. Some will observe that I have already published a number of columns regarding the aforementioned sentiment. And I will continue to do so for as long as the Obama’s hypocritically admonish to the minutest detail how we are to live lives of sacrificial austerity for the sake of the COMMUNITY while they themselves wallow in opulent luxury.

According to NBCBayArea.com, the President attended a fundraiser in California primarily for the benefit of Senator Barbara Boxer. Despite likely expending more in fossil fuels to reach his destination than the average suburbanite does puttering around town in a Ford Explorer or Jeep Cherokee, the opulence did not stop there.

When most regular Americans have a get together, they usually have cheese whiz and maybe Dominoes Pizza if they really feel like splurging. Such provisions, however, aren’t quite good enough for those that not only think they are better than the rest of us but that it is their place to run our own lives as well.

According to SFGate.com, those paying over $17,000 per person to attend the fundraiser held at the Getty Mansion ingested quail eggs and caviar, salmon, avocado on tortilla chips, and Kobe beef short ribs with potatoes. For desert, those gathered had buckwheat crepes with roasted cherries and almond ice cream. If one is what one eats, wouldn’t that now make Obama “buckwheat” with one granted linguistic amnesty from being denounced as racist since one would simply be making a dietary observation.

As the type that expect to be praised and heralded for all that they do, the Obamas’s didn’t start a vegetable garden at the White House as a way to relax by poking around in the dirt at the end of the day. Rather, to the First Lady especially, the very bounty of the Good Lord’s earth is to be co-opted for the purposes of scolding the American people as to our ways deemed errant in the eyes of contemporary world Bolshevism.

One of the obvious reasons behind the garden is to rub the noses of the American parents in the nutritional insufficiencies of what they decide to feed their children. For example, should the social conditioning proposed by Frau Obama fully take hold, feeding your kids short ribs and ice cream all in the same meal will probably be grounds for a visit from social services should the neighbors catch wind of it.

The symbolism of the White House garden, however, goes beyond the centrality of nutrition to healthy living. The Obamas not only want to tell us what to eat but also from where to eat.

Catching on among those ashamed for enjoying a standard of living above that of Third World squalor are the Slow Food and Locally Grown Food movements. According to the advocates of these positions, the elites should admonish we lowly masses to only consume non-processed victuals grown in our respective areas. Most conveniently fail to mention that, if this mindset replaced current food production practices, Americans would be chained to their kitchens (or wherever else these fanatics allow us to prepare our sustenance) and more importantly, what is to prevent widespread starvation in areas where not much grows in the winter.

But so long as the likes of the Obamas have full bellies, it really doesn’t matter what kind of gastronomical hardship their policy idiosyncrasies might impose upon the American people. It is the assumption, after all, among the circle Obama is most comfortable with that the population needs to be reduced anyway.

It has been argued that an army travels on its stomach. Other than the relationships with God and family, none are as profound as one’s relationship with food.

A leader’s attitude towards basic sustenance will reveal a great deal about his underlying political philosophy. Unfortunately, it seems Obama believes he is to be denied no culinary delight while you as a mere commoner are to endure happily a life of dietary aestheticism.